Focene is one of the 14 resorts of the City of Fiumicino (www.fiumicino.net) which is one of the first in Italy both for its extent (24000 hectares) and for the length of its coasts (12 sea miles, about 24 km); it is also the seat of Rome International Airport “Leonardo da Vinci”.

Focene is one of the 4 sea hamlet of municipal territory and is just 15 km away from Rome. Substantially it is a large sea village, which overlooks Mediterranean shores (Tyrrenian Sea), risen in the 40s as a fishing settlement.

Then the town developed during the beginning of 60s, following the construction of the airport, which has become an international airport that receives 27 million persons per year, just 2 km away from Focene. In those years, Focene was discovered by eminent personalities and families who chose it as summer residence (Sciascia, Colonna). Also Torlonia’s manor was inside the pinewood at the south entrance of Focene, in Viale del Principe, today property of Cesarini-Sforza family.

Besides on the beaches in north Focene, Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni’s film “Dolce Vita” was shot.

The word “focene” (plural) is derived from “focena” (feminine singular, “marsuino” in the masculine) a type of cetacean (Phocoena) of the family of DELFINIDI, which differs by its short and filled out snout and by its brownish colour. You can easily find it off our coasts. (Linguistics research by Fabio Moretti)

The pleasant town, at the moment populated by about 2700 residents (800 units), develops along Focene’s main avenue, a guiding road that runs parallel to the sea, and that is constituted of one or two-storey detached houses with the typical Mediterranean look.

Walking the sandy shore northwards, you can run into its mouth which originally was fed by a water course generated by a natural lake. This lake was drained because of the carrying out the Leonardo da Vinci Airport.

The mouth divides Focene from Fregene and from Macchiagrande Naturalistic Oasis.

The resort offers a daily and seasonal tourist white and large beaches, with an important, splendid and protected heritage of Mediterranean dunes, with an original spontaneous vegetative arrangement, that blooms in a wonderful explosion of colours during spring months.

In remote times, the coastal area near Rome was considered as a lacustrian area, marshy and unhealthy particularly in Maccarese area. The problem was really faced only in 1878, with an act for the reclamation of the Roman plain. In this period labourers arrived from

Ravenna settled down there and started a great work which revolutionized that area’s geography. The first reclamation involved a digging out of almost one hundred kilometres of primary and secondary canals. The main system was made up of two canals, that connected themselves, for the high waters coming from hilly areas, and that flowed into a general collecting of high waters with a direct mouth into the sea. Then the waters were lifted using the water-scooping machine of Focene and were converged to the sea. The water-scooping machine, at that time, was a steam engine fed with coal.

Although the work was grandiose, the results weren’t sufficient to reclaim the area at all. A special act for a complete reclamation in 1923 posed the question again, singling out agriculture as the best reclamation system and starting a geographical and social revolution. The plumbing works were completed with other hundreds of kilometres of canals, both for draining and irrigation, with the help of labourers coming for the most part from Venetia and Lombardy, but also from Marche and Lazio.

Among hoisting systems, the most important one is just the Focene’s one. You can find it along Via delle Idrovore, right out of the inhabited area. It is made up of a whole of buildings dating from 1925 with its typical architecture. Near those buildings there is a water basin where a lot of varieties of fishes and birds made themselves a home. The reclamation management has been entrusted to the Tiber and Roman Plain Reclamation Union for years.

SANTA NINFA

In the middle of the countryside, cut off from lines of communication, there is the little eighteenth century Chapel of Santa Ninfa, which took its name from a martyr of Isola Sacra. To get there, you need to enter Viale Santa Ninfa, a side-road of Via delle Idrovore. The tiny structure is all that remained of a whole of the same period hamlet, now lost.

HISTORICAL OUTLINE, ITINERARIES AND SIGTHS

Focene is a hamlet inside the young City of Fiumicino (www.fiumicino.net), that is, because of its extent, one of the biggest in Italy. Together with Fregene, Maccarese, Passoscuro, Focene is one of the four sea hamlet that are present in the Coast of the City, soon entirely linked on the seaside. This ancient cross-road of peoples has important traces of civilizations such as the Altanoviani’s villages of the Italic people already 4550 years ago, and the site of the Copper Age of Cerquete in Maccarese. In this place we can find the first traces of agriculture, breeding, leather use, wool spinning, animal domestication, work and hunt instruments in obsidian (Eolie Islands, Palmarola and Sardinia quarries), flint (Tiber quarries) and trachyte, copper and pottery manufacture, funeral rite with the discovery of the most ancient equine species in Italy, the Cerquete-Fianello horse in Maccarese, 2 km away from Focene. Other traces are the Etruscan installations (Cerveteri’s Necropolis, 20 km away from Focene) of the IV° century b.C. and the Phoenician landings dating from 450 b.C.(Uni-Astarte Temple by the S.Severa Castle, 30 km away from Focene) and the first Roman Sea colonies dating from 250 b.C. such as Pyrgi (S.Severa). There are also sites of basic importance for the development of Roman Empire and Mediterranean Civilization (Ostia Antica IV° century b.C., 5 km away from Focene).

It is just the Mediterranean Sea that has harboured and kept united for thousands of years such marvellous cultural heritage, and still nowadays nearly 150 millions of residents livearound its coasts: a real States Federation by itself, fallen for the increasing and present constellation of the European States.

Behind the small town of Focene (Fiumicino City), we find the imperial harbours of Traiano and Claudio of the Ancient Rome, 54 a.C.; the Necropolis of the harbour City of Portus, I° century a.C.; and the Ship Museum adjoining the Leonardo da Vinci Airport, where remains of important ancient ships are preserved.

Other qualified itineraries and sights are the Castle of Porto and its Church (basilica and Necropolis) dedicated to Saint Ippolito and Lucia, Niccolina’s Tower (XIV° century a.C.), the Church of the Crucifix (end of XVII century a.C.), S.Maria della Salute Church, Clementina’s Tower, Guglielmini’s Villa, and the historical centre (Borgo Valadier).

It is also possible to visit the City of Rome (only 15 km away) and to book for historical and turistic excursions and boat trips on the Tiber river.

THE OUTSKIRTS

Fregene, Maccarese, Torre in Pietra,Tragliata, Tragliatella, Passoscuro are the main resorts representative of the agricultural production and of rich enogastronomic tourneys of this territory: Merlot, Chardonnay, Novello, Spumante, milk, cheese, yoghurt , biological and in the wild state meat of Maremma, vegetables. The marvellous fruits of the Pontine Marches land, called ex-Milky Way, seat of the greatest farm of Europe (Maccarese Ltd).